The Aged P

In all the (quite justifiable) euphoria over OBL plus my own patriotic fervour and obsession with chocolate a quite significant political event has slipped slightly below the radar.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have just won a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliamentary election and therefore, after nearly five years of leading a minority government constantly at the mercy of votes of no confidence from other parties, he will be Prime Minister with a good working majority and beholden to nobody else except his own supporters.

Strangely enough very few people expect to see massive policy changes or initiatives because, despite lacking an overall majority, Harper has already transformed the Canadian political and economic landscape as the BBC, in a surprisingly honest assessment , has been forced to admit.

Analysts say the prime minister has slowly nudged the country further to the right during his five-year tenure.
He has lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoided signing climate change legislation and become a stark advocate of Arctic sovereignty.
He has also increased military spending and extended Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan.

He campaigned on his record of economic management. Since Canada has come out of the recession with one of the strongest and healthiest economies of the G7 he was able to make a very effective case. However he promised to focus on lowering taxes even further and reducing the deficit.

Canadians must have been impressed because the Conservatives made deep inroads into metropolitan Canada, especially Toronto which has for many years been a Liberal Party stronghold.

Ezra Levant, a conservative commentator for the Sun News Network, says the switch of support of visible minorities and new immigrants from the Liberals to the Conservatives is a significant demographic change.
“There’s this whole other media in Canada, ethnic newspapers, TV and radio stations in other languages that our parliamentary media is just not plugged into. In those media battlefields, the conservative brand is dominant,” says Mr Levant.

Interesting. That certainly goes against the mantra being constantly pimped by our “betters” in the media and academe. Maybe there’s a lesson there for all those GOP “consultants” and “strategists” being quoted on Politico…

Indeed the Liberals, soft left, corruption prone and buttressed by a compliant media, like the US Democrats, were one of the biggest losers. For nearly a hundred years the dominating force in Federal politics either in government or as the official opposition the party is now reduced to a rump, alongside the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

The BQ had nearly 50 seats in the previous parliament – now they will be lucky to have 4. Most of their seats were captured by the socialist NDP, which, with gains in other areas now becomes the official opposition. Jack Layton, a rather colourful figure, has pushed the party towards a classic rainbows and unicorns platform of high taxes, increased welfare and radical climate change legislation so naturally you will find him being heavily oversold by the US media plus the BBC and The Guardian, despite the “massage parlour” incident from his past.

For some reason the predominantly liberal left Canadian media went John Edwards on this and buried it until Sun TV (a newish channel labelled the “Fox of the North” by the great and the good) brought it up in the final days of the campaign.

Harper is pro Israel, treats a mainly critical media with contempt and is quite a reasonable rock keyboards man. He holds strong social conservative views but in the past has been opposed to those Conservative Party members who wanted to push the party into socially conservative positions. He prefers to be seen as a fiscal conservative, strong on national security and extremely suspicious of the United Nations.

I’ll drink to that.

So, I imagine, would a certain other person from the northern end of the continent….

This was one of the two cakes commissioned by William and Kate for their wedding. The chocolate cake was William’s boyhood foody fetish.

Prince William has asked McVitie’s to create one of his favourite sweet treats that will provide an alternative to the official royal wedding cake by Fiona Cairns.

The confectionery delight is being created by the biscuit company at one of its UK plants to a recipe they have received from Buckingham Palace kitchen chefs.

As a young boy the Prince used to enjoy the cake, which is made from crushed rich tea biscuits and dark chocolate.

Please note – Rich Tea biscuits, NOT Digestives!

The royal family said that the dark chocolate to make it could come from anywhere, but the only acceptable biscuits were Rich Tea ones.

Paul Courtney, Cake Design and Development Head Chef told The Telegraph, “Rich Tea are perhaps not the most glamorous biscuits in the world, and now they are taking a starring role in the royal wedding. But they’re quite crisp compared to a digestive, and so they’ll contrast well with the softness of the chocolate.”

The Lovely Mrs P felt it was her patriotic duty to use the very same recipe to grace the table of our more humble abode here in West Sussex.

It was delicious.

It was more than delicious it was the nectar of the gods – and very very rich…

I wish I could provide you with a picture of our cake – but we ate it…every single crumb.

This is what you need

225g Rich Tea Biscuits

115g Salted Butter

3 rounded tablespoons of cocoa powder

55g of caster sugar (superfine sugar)

2 heaped tablespoons Golden Syrup

115g plain chocolate (zero milk) sweet chocolate, not cooking [semisweet]chocolate

Method

Line 20cm cake tin

Roughly crush biscuits in plastic bag with rolling pin

Melt butter and add caster sugar, cocoa powder and Golden Syrup

Melt chocolate and add to mixture with crushed biscuits

Spoon mixture into tin and leave in fridge

Decorate with melted chocolate and/or icing sugar

Then eat – and enjoy……..

For additional info – watch this….

We sat down at 9.30am and watched the whole thing until THE KISS four hours later.

Didn’t intend to.

At my age this history/politics junkie tends towards the cynical and, of course, being a man prefers to maintain a cool mask of disdain while the ladies wax lyrical over weddings and babies.

Plus I’m always suspicious of crowds.

But the sheer enthusiasm and goodwill of the people who came to watch disarmed my pessimism. They didn’t come to demand more of my taxes to featherbed their public sector salaries. They weren’t breaking windows or urinating on statues because they would have less money to spend on pizzas and beer in their student unions. Their faces were not distorted by hate and anger in order to intimidate an elected government into bending to the will of an unrepresentative minority.

They came as individuals, families, neighbours and friends of their own free will to celebrate a joyous event. They came with banners, flags and placards that proclaimed a patriotic pride and messages of affection and goodwill for two young people who were about to make a public pledge of love and commitment .

Nobody ordered them to come. There were no committees of busybodies telling them which slogans to chant. They came of their own free will. There were one million of them. Young, old, fat, thin, posh and poor they represented the real people of Britain, the folk who do their jobs, pay their taxes and keep the country going and seldom make a fuss. Today was their day and they made it their own.

Of course there needed to be police and many of them armed, not to keep the crowds in order for they disciplined themselves but to prevent evil fanatics and poisonous misfits from performing their street theatre of hate and death.

The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, the ceremony was dignified and majestic and the pageantry pitch perfect, but for me, as a father and grandfather, the moment that really touched my heart was how tightly Catherine held her father’s hand as the service began. This is a woman who comes from a loving family and therefore knows how to love.

It augurs well for the future, I fancy….

His pride and joy....

I think our son and his family have been dealt an ace or two….

We are staying in a cottage in Fowey in Cornwall which looks down the hill to the harbour.

Enjoying an ice cream….

While the grandchildren and our son in law walk along to the quayside

The kids love it by the sea

Harry 6, Pippa 9, Hannah 12

Funny how with a six year old the shoe “accidently” left his foot and began to float away

Our daughter shares a joke with The Lovely Mrs P

Hannah wonders if Grandma is being serious when she says that once upon a time she was 12….

While I wonder if it’s time for a refreshing gin and tonic….

But at least the sun is shining….

Lena Jeger was a British left wing Labour MP who was a constant thorn in the side of the party leadership during the fifties, sixties and seventies. However she was also a down to earth politician always willing to tell a story against herself.

In 1953, when electioneering in London in a run down block of flats, she met a woman in the lift. Jeger straight away began quizzing her on what, for the Labour left, was the big issue of the day in the early 50s – should, eight years after Hitler’s defeat, West Germany be allowed to create an army .

Jeger was passionately opposed to the creation of a new German Army and wanted to know if she  agreed with her views. The woman looked Jeger straight in the eye and, ignoring Germany, raised a totally different issue.

“People have been pissing in this lift. What are you going to do about it?”

Jeger said even if she were elected there was not much she could do about it and went back to talking about the threat of a rearmed Germany.

The lady wasn’t impressed.

“Well,” said the woman. “If you can’t stop people pissing in lifts, how are you going to stop the Germans rearming?”

In later years Jeger always said the woman’s comment deflated her own sense of self importance and made her realise that ordinary people usually have a set of priorities very different from the opinionated windbaggerry of the political class.

Politicians usually love grand schemes and plans and love the concept of “the big picture” because it always contains a cushion of excuse when things don’t quite pan out as they predicted. Voters are concerned about the here and now as it impinges on them.

Very rarely shall the twain meet…..

N.B. For US readers: flats = apartments, lift = elevator

Robert Stacy McCain is infuriatingly addictive.

OK sometimes his Runyonesque shtick can be irritating and he mounts hobbyhorses that usually take him round into ever decreasing circles (on contraception he is more catholic than the pontiff himself, waxing ever lyrical about vast families)

His recent feminism cat fight with Little Miss Attila ended fairly quickly with him being tied into a reef knot and, very gently, plopped out of the arena. Somewhere AJ Kelshiker is smiling…

His current emergence as a military pundit lecturing the Libyan rebels on their tactical shortcomings is quite astonishing for a man who clearly loves history. Show me an example of a group of ill armed, militarily inexperienced insurgents who, within a month, have transformed themselves into a formidable fighting force and I’ll maybe concede some ground. Otherwise, Stacy, just leave the long distance commenting based on press reports to Allahpundit and his cat.

But for all of that when he is in common sense mode on the key issues vital to the day to day battle against the seductive prescriptions of snake oil salesmen like Krugman and their water carriers (often laughingly claiming to be “journalists”) Stacy is THE MAN…

How does deficit reduction take money out of the economy?

The federal government doesn’t have a Magic Pot O’ Money and, contrary to whatever Ben Bernanke apparently believes, it can’t create money from thin air. Every dime that the federal government spends must come from one of three sources:

1.  Taxation, which obviously takes money out of the economy.

1. Borrowing (i.e., deficit spending), which also takes money out of the economy, in the form of drains on investment. Money that is spent by private investors to buy government debt (i.e., bonds) is money not available to private business either as loans or as investment capital (stock).
2. Inflation, which devalues currency and thereby — yes, you guessed it — takes money out of the economy.

So Ben Adler’s idea that reducing the annual deficit means “taking all this money out of the economy” has no basis in reality.

= Stacynomics 101

RSM for Treasury in the Palin cabinet?

Whoops – I forgot….Stacy’s pledged himself to another…..

John Lewis, when asked why the MJQ played God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, said there were certain tunes (like GRYMG and When Johnny Comes Marching Home) that just make you feel good.

So true.

Well, here’s another – yes, I know its only Aqua with the great Luciano Pavarotti – but just watch and feel the buzz. I defy anyone to remain passive whenever this tune is played – it’s probably one of the most familiar tunes in the western world – and even if your knowledge of Italian is zilch everyone can pump out part of that chorus line…

Yet isn’t it rather weird that this most famous of songs is about – a funicular railway! Viennese waltz king Richard Strauss couldn’t believe it either. He thought it was a cheerful royalty free Italian folk song and loved it so much he included it in one of his works, “Aus Italien”

Big mistake

Lawyers hit him like a rocket – lawyers acting on behalf of Luigi Denza who had composed the music to fit words written by journalist Peppino Turco. The courts sided with Denza and thereafter he got a chunk of royalty every time Aus Italien was played.

So “Funiculì, Funiculà” is a song written about a funicular railway – but not just any funicular railway. Turco and Denza wrote it for the opening of the line that opened in 1880 to take visitors to the top of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples.

What is even more interesting is that it was probably written as an advertisement for the railway – possibly the world’s first commercial jingle….

Up to the 1870s the only way for tourists to avoid an exhausting climb to the crater of Vesuvius was either by a sedan chair or on the back of a donkey. The chair carriers and donkey owners were all locals, rather surly characters who charged exorbitant fees and guarded their monopoly with brutal ferocity.

When the plans for the railway were announced they felt threatened. The project managers, fearing that their employees might be intimidated, disbursed money to the porters as a gesture of compensation for reduced business.

Initially this appeared to work – until they realised that rumours were being spread that the railway was dangerous. The management then decided to mount their own PR campaign and it is quite likely that Turco and Denza were given an unofficial commission to compose something to publicise the project – and the rest is history.

Indeed the song has outlived its subject. The Vesuvius Funicular was destroyed in the eruption of 1944 and is long gone. Today you can take a bus halfway then walk the rest, which is how we got there.

There has been talk of building another railway, though whether anything will be done is debatable. But that is irrelevant. The railway is gone but the song remains – and I guarantee that, during the turn of the century celebrations in Italy in 2100, “Funiculì, Funiculà” will still be belted out with gusto…..

Right wing shock chick Frances Martel  is obviously on the look out for a gig at the Daily Caller because she just penned one of the most brown nosing job applications I have ever seen in her recent Palin hit piece at Mediaite.

It ostensibly centred around Palin’s response to a Daily Caller round up of criticism from the right of her governor’s signature on a bipartisan law granting tax credits to media companies wanting to work in Alaska.  The DC  made much of some rather sniffy comments from Jim Geraghty at NRO about subsidies etc (rather rich coming from Mr Tax Deductible himself, as Dan Riehl pointed out in  a classic debagging) and attached a statement from Palin defending her policy.

Palin felt the DC article had not been fairly structured so aired her views in a Facebook post which also referenced a rather degrading comment about her that DC boss Tucker Carlson had made on Twitter.

This was too much for Martel. As a Harvard girl she just felt so angry that some snowbilly mom from the sticks should have the audacity to criticise a rich guy who attended a top Rhode Island boarding school and graduated from one of the leading Little Ivies.

Didn’t Palin know, she trilled, that Tucker Carlson

spent the better part of a decade challenging liberal talking points in a pre-Fox News world…..spent five years face to face with James Carville promoting conservative principles on Crossfire and later hosting a show on MSNBC before landing at Fox News.

OMG that must have been tough – out there in the studio in front of the cameras taking the shots and nothing to show for it but a six figure salary….and while young Tucker was out there doing real hand to hand combat what was Palin doing for the conservative cause – apart from having babies?

Nothing much at all, except run a town then doing a little bitty piece of energy regulation and catching some GOP hands in the till then becoming governor of her state against the political establishment of both parties. How could that possibly compare with pontificating on the screen or in print?

Martel then makes her job pitch.

it’s probably best not to throw stones (at) a house with as strong a foundation among conservatives as Carlson’s.

Carlson, you see, is the future of conservatism because, as a media operative he can still “engage the opposition” whereas

Palin has crippled the misnamed “conservative” (more aptly defined as pro-freedom) right wing such that it is difficult to see the Republican Party win back the presidency for at least the next decade

And how did she do that?  By infiltrating the Tea Party movement which Martel says was originally just a bunch of Ron Paul supporters with ideals totally alien to Palin . These innocents obviously had no idea that Palin’s sinister influence would have such a negative impact on the 2010 election.

But wait a minute…according to Martel Palin has no “communication skills” or “likability” so how was she able to take over the Tea Party?

Sorry, folks, if you’re looking for logic then Frances Martel is just not your girl. At Harvard she was called a wannabe Anne Coulter and alleged to be bubbling around some of the more questionable edges of the right.  As for her reporting skills one hopes that the excuse of youth and exuberance might be offered to justify some fairly shoddy reporting.

Now normally most reasonable observers would agree that left liberal hopenchangey hack Joy Reid is a few centimes short of a franc when it comes to attempting to comment without bias but the bitchslap she gave to Martel over her Mediaite rehash of the alleged Obama/Vera Baker “affair” had the ring of truth about it. As Palin would say there is enough going wrong in America under Obama without having to resort to desperate measures involving certificates or alleged mistresses.

Martel got into trouble with some boxing fans when she appeared to imply that Manny Pacquiao was on steroids. Her shock chick tactics of dissing Sarah Palin’s conservative credentials appear to be a manifestation of “look at me I’m so cutting edge” vanity scribblings than solid, old fashioned shoeleather journalism.

Maybe Frances Martel should be tested for steroids….

We’ve been out of the loop for a few days. Over the weekend we helped our son and his family in their house move from this in London

to this, in the countryside…

…and when you look out of the front door you see this…

We helped them empty some of the 10,000 boxes (well it seemed like that, most of them containing toys), sort out the kids for their new schools and find out how the electricity, water supply, drainage and central heating worked. What is always odd about buying a house (for most people by far the most expensive thing they will ever purchase) is that you usually make the decision after spending maybe just an hour or two looking it over so when you actually move in that’s when the exploration really begins.

But the new house has so much potential – a large garden, already well tended and an attached garage with room for two cars plus generous workbench space – ideal for our son’s pride and joy (at present lodged in our garage..lol..)

 Next to the garage is another outbuilding, currently a woodstore but easily converted into an office/spare bedroom. There is also space to park several cars (a nice change from the street only parking at their previous house) so hopefully by the end of the year they should be comfortably ensconced with a three year plan to turn it into a dream home – finances permitting!